1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card clothing for flats of a card with a carrier element and a plurality of card wires received with at least one received section in the carrier element, wherein each card wire has at least one processing section arranged exposed outside of the carrier element. The invention also relates to a carrier element which can be used for manufacturing such a card clothing.
2. Description of the Related Art
A card is used in manufacturing yarn for parallelizing the individual fibers of a raw material consisting of inordinate fibers. For this purpose, a card usually is essentially composed of a swift formed essentially in the form of a circular cylinder and a number of flats which are movable along a predetermined path relative to the swift extending approximately parallel to the circumferential surface of the swift. For processing the fibers of the raw material, the swift has on its circumferential surface a swift clothing formed, for example, by sawtooth wires, while the flats are equipped with flat clothings along the predetermined path on the side facing the swift. These flat clothings can also be constructed in the form of sawtooth wire sections which extend parallel to the predetermined path. However, also used for this purpose are flat clothings in the form of card clothings of the above-described type. In comparison to the all-steel clothings formed of sawtooth wire sections, the card clothings of the above-described type are distinguished by a substantially lower weight and by significantly lower manufacturing costs. In this connection, the weight of a flat equipped with a card clothing of the above-described type may be less than half the weight of a flat with a flat clothing formed from sawtooth wires. This not only results in a significantly lower energy consumption when operating a card, but also in less wear because the movement and guidance of the flats equipped with a card clothing of the above-described type along the predetermined path can take place using particularly low forces. For this reason, particularly when manufacturing inexpensive yarns having low quality requirements, card clothings of the above-described type are increasingly used.
However, it has been found problematic that the web-shaped carrier elements, which are composed of an elastic synthetic material and/or a plurality of fabric layers which are vulcanized together, tear already after a short time in the area of the received sections of the card wires. This is because, during the processing of the fiber material, substantial forces act on the carrier element in the area of the received sections of the card wires. For eliminating this deficiency, it has already been proposed in CH 636 134 to provide the carrier elements of card clothings of the above-described type with web-shaped reinforcement inserts. However, the manufacture of such carrier elements is comparatively very expensive, so that the cost reductions to be achieved by the use of these card clothings are at least partially eliminated.
In addition, when using the card clothings of the above-described type, it has been found to be a disadvantage that a large quantity of short fibers accumulates in the area of the processing sections of the card wires; for ensuring a reliable operation of the card, this requires a frequent cleaning of the card clothings of the flats.